This invention relates to the improved manufacture of a tool for the precision finishing of fiber optic cable. More particularly, it provides a construction and a manufacture of such a tool that yield multiple advantages over the prior tool.
Communication cables using fibers of optically transmissive material and which carry signals in the form of light waves are increasingly used in lieu of the traditional cables having copper or like conductors of electrical current. The efficient transfer of optical energy to and from these fiber optic cables requires, among other factors, proper termination of the cable by whatever connector is used. The termination determines such parameters crucial to energy transfer as the location, the orientation and the surface finish of the fiber optic facet. Consequently, after a connector is assembled on a fiber optic cable, the projecting end of the fiber optic bundle is ground and polished to attain a precisely located and highly flat and smooth facet. These finishing operations also orient the facet precisely at a selected angle relative to the axis of the fiber bundle. In most instances, the facet is perpendicular to the fiber axis.
The conventional support for the cable connector during these grind and polish finishing operations in a machined precision tool that forms a reference surface against which the fiber bundle is finished. The tool mounts the cable connector precisely at a selected angle relative to the reference surface and with the end of the fiber optic bundle positioned to be ground to and polished along the reference surface. For this purpose, The Amphenol Company, for example, markets a one-piece polishing tool machined of a 300-series stainless steel.
The conventional machined finishing tool is costly, but it must be discarded after a limited number of uses due to abrasive wear of the reference surface by the grind and polish operations. It is also known to use a finishing tool for fiber optic communication cables that is assembled of two machined parts, one of which provides the reference surface and the other of which attaches to the cable termination being finished. The two parts of the tool are assembled in a manner that allows them to be selectively repositioned to re-establish desired dimensionals after abrasive wear. This two-piece finishing tool, however, continues to be relatively costly.